It’s really not tough to bruise my ego. For a long time, I felt that this was a hurdle I had to clear if I stood a chance in the big, wide world. It clung to me like lint, and removing it was a strange hell. Besides, it was never long before it would cover me again.

I hold things a little too close for a little too long. I coat them in my very clumsy love. There is no such thing as forgetting.

Not for the girl who recalls every minute of your 7th birthday party. Not for the girl who knows every word to a jingle for a local car dealership that hasn’t kissed airwaves in at least a decade.

Hurt doesn’t fit inside my closet. Instead it spreads itself out like some kind of unwelcome guest. It is painfully obvious.

Only I’m not sure WHY it’s so painful. I don’t understand why it is considered noble to suffer in silence. I don’t know why being modest about the pain we feel is taken as an expression of strength. Maybe it’s easier for some people to compartmentalize suffering. Maybe they can store it in a cabinet and pull it out one drawer at a time. Maybe the cabinet remains dusty and untouched.

But I can’t.

There is no organizing my grief. There is no “save this for later.” There is no grace as I expel these feelings. I will cry until my skull feels like it is caving in, until my nose is so stuffed that breathing becomes an alarmingly difficult task.

I will do this because it is a choice.

Because I spent much too long sealing my feelings tightly in glass jars,

And because this is what I need to be whole again.

If a jar were to spill out of my open mouth onto concrete, and if the glass were to spider, would we call it fragile?

Why would’t we recognize its incredible durability? The odds have been beaten in front of us and all that we notice is the way the jagged lines meet each other as if it were a funeral.

Yes. I am fragile and delicate. But those are just cheap rip-offs of vulnerable and brave. I know what the ugliest parts of me look like. They are very real, and so it must be true that other parts are really quite extraordinary.

There is no forgetting what I know by heart. My soul attaches itself to every gorgeous detail of those I love. Because I cannot forget, I weave bits of them into every piece I write.

It’s these small, gorgeous, haunting details that remind me there is still time for the unimaginable to happen.

Over the last three years I’ve been continuously rubbing up against my own reflection.

It’s been a productive, albeit hellish experience. I’ve been able to identify and talk about what hurts, and I’ve learned a great deal about the message I want to leave with other people. In learning this, I’ve noticed that there are some questions that are better left burning holes in brains than spoken like swords. If you were following me when I wrote “What To Expect,” you’ll know we’ve been down this block a time or two. There’s a question that sucks, and I’ve only just learned that it sucks. If I could reach into your chest cavity and pinch your heart, I imagine that it would feel a lot like it does when you ask

“So, what do you do?”

I know. Karlee, you sensitive Susan! But look, it’s like this: You ask said question and I awkwardly clarify by asking “Like, for work?” With the answer almost always being “Yes,” I am left feeling like a frozen turkey thawing right there in front of everybody. (I know it’s weird but try to let yourself imagine this one. How humiliating.) I come back with “Oh, nothing. I don’t do anything,” because the space between us is too crowded to say that I take my meds and write some words and pluck some strings and go to the grocery store on a good day, and that on a bad day I just don’t get out of bed. This shame is misplaced, but it lingers there anyway, a silent suggestion that my means of earning an income are what make me interesting.

I know that this isn’t the case. I know that it’s a staple phrase in introductory conversation. It’s so normal that it blooms on my tongue on occasion.

But what if it didn’t have to be?

What if you asked me if I believed in ghosts? What if I asked you about the weird, useless talent that only you seem to possess? I think I might tell you that there is nothing I can’t imagine, and maybe you would say that you’re double jointed while demonstrating some creeptastic hand gesture. Maybe we’d laugh and decide that we were very fond of one another.

I’ve come to the realization that the way you make a living holds such a small fraction of my interest in knowing you. (Unless of course you are a professional taste tester OR you spend your 9-5 beating on the craft that lights fireworks in your chest.) I am sure you are this brilliant in all settings, but I’d rather hear your easy laughter than get to know only your furrowed brow and busy mind. I want our souls to kiss as much as our egos.

So, since you asked:

I wake up every morning and I dance madly to “Shake It Out” by Florence and the Machine. I’m learning to play guitar because I have an irrational fear of my brain turning to mush. I have a therapist who tells me not to should all over myself. I’m relentlessly ringing my own bell with messages that say “I love you.” Sometimes I cry and type. I’m sick and I’m not sorry. I want to write music and cultivate my character.

And, if you’re into that kind of thing, knowing you would be another tick on my ever-growing tally of bright sides.

When I first purchased the shirt, I thought it was funny and clever. Now, rolling the cloth between my fingers, I realize that this theory feels completely foreign to me. I imagine all of the times I must have referred to Karma as “bitch,” and I’m not sure if I want to laugh or gag.

I’m not knocking anyone’s beliefs. It’s just that I’ve had some weird experiences, and if you’ve been following me awhile, you know that they shape my perspective more than anything.

The words “Karma is a bitch” bounced around between my angst-ridden teenage friends and I A LOT. So often I’m surprised we didn’t get smashed and have them tattooed. I have clear memories of being a regular offender, and I have managed to narrow my saying this down to the following 3 reasons:

Reason 1) Someone was a bag to me after I was a jerk to her cousin after they were obbvv starting shit with my girl Trina. (Sidenote: I have never actually had a friend named Trina.)

Reason 2: A guy dumped me and I had intrusive thoughts about him developing relentless bacne.

Reason 3: I drew a major blank in heated conversation and needed to sound effortlessly wise and biting.

That worked for a while. The phrase was like a cigarette in the way that my pulse would slow as I exhaled responsibility and watched it dance unabashedly, stopping only to kiss the night. Then one morning I woke to find that I was 20 years old…and also that my life had fallen apart. It didn’t occur to me until right then that this might be karmic retribution. I was trapped and frantic for days inside of this completely weird spiral of hindsight.

“Is this about that time I stole the book about serial killers? Am I paying for the day I publicly outed a classmate for crapping in the outdoor pool? Is it because I left spiteful notes and lied about being at bush parties among a myriad of other things I can’t possibly begin to remember now?”

For all of the years spent in fear of being wrong, it was suddenly very difficult to remember being anything but. Very slowly I am learning that this is not any way to live. Very slowly I am purging this guilt about a trait so very human. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. There’s no possible way to avoid it. I know that we all say “Nobody’s perfect” with voices flat as prairies, but if that’s the case, why don’t we ever want to admit it? Aren’t the hard things hard enough? These devastating things, these traumatizing, crippling, painful things…Aren’t they heavy enough without also wearing the notion that we DESERVE them?

I finally met Karma, but she was nothing like the way I’d written her hundreds of times before. She was less of a fiery, vindictive force and more like a mirror. As I become more comfortable being wrong, I can allow others to be wrong without the need to rub their faces in it. I am aware that every hostile situation I’ve seen has my fingerprints on it. Action and reaction. I think it’s strange now, the way one raises a voice and another a fist in a frantic effort to cover what we already know.

I don’t deserve to be sick. You don’t deserve to be sad. We have about as much control over these things as a parade has over a midsummer storm. We are going to fuck it up repeatedly, and then time will pass and it will be more of a scar than a festering wound. We’ll call it a “learning experience.” I hope we can listen to some Radiohead and pity ourselves before making the phone call that says “I’m Sorry.” And when that phone call comes, I hope we can say “I know.”

That obnoxious shirt has an entirely new meaning to me. It basically goes like this: What I receive is a reflection of what I am putting out. I know you’re probably picturing me wearing palazzo pants and drinking a smoothie the colour of the forest floor, but hear me out: Now that I don’t have to approach things with a sense of competition, I can just be kind. I can ask how someone’s day is and genuinely mean it. What I’ve noticed so far is that people are both surprised and delighted by a kind word and patient eyes. More importantly, they almost always return it.

You can look into any glass surface and see your sharp cheekbones tangled in vines of fine lines. But if you look at the face of the person in front of you, I mean REALLY look at them, you might discover hints of your soul in their expression.